Jack Corry had long been deemed quite first favourite in the neighbourhood. He was bright, kindly. To young and old alike, he was ever ready to render a service, and people used to look at him and say that this was his one fault. He was the same to all, and no person could detect any sign of preference towards any of his fair neighbours.
Jeannie Bellew had spent two winters in the Riviera. Whether there now existed any cause for anxiety on her behalf, there had been enough to justify the fears of her parents and her own banishment.
A sharp attack of inflammation of the lungs, brought on, if truth must be told, by her own wilfulness, had left the girl without absolute disease, but extremely sensitive to every change of temperature. After her second winter in the South, she had returned home with greatly improved strength and looks, but in other respects rather changed than improved.
Jeannie, the little schoolgirl, with her artless country manners and winsome ways, was gone, and in her stead there returned to Ballycorene one who was a girl in age and looks, but who brought with her more knowledge of the world than all her feminine neighbours put together could boast of.
Mrs. Bellew had accompanied her daughter on both occasions, and a middle-aged, trusty servant waited on the two. But the mother dreaded the loneliness of life in apartments, where everything and every person were strange around them, and so the pair spent the two winters in a large hotel, and gained many experiences which the younger especially would have been much better without.
Before Jeannie's reappearance, Ballycorene gossips had begun to couple the name of Jack Corry with that of Norah Guiness, and to say that at last the way to his heart had been discovered. Also that if he had the luck to gain Norah's, he would win the greatest treasure that could enrich his life and brighten a home, though she would be almost a dowerless maiden.
Perhaps it was because no word or act of Norah's gave Jack Corry cause to think she bestowed a thought upon him, that he began to devote much thought to her. She practised no little coquettish airs, did not pretend to shun him, in order to hire him to seek her. She met him, as she did others, with the bright smile, the honest look devoid of all self-consciousness, the kindly greeting which was natural in one whom he had known all his life, and no more.
No girl looked on Norah as a possible rival. All regarded her as a true-hearted friend, and saw in her a self-devoting daughter, the one comfort of her father's life, and a sister almost worshipped by his three motherless lads. None could accuse her of striving to attract Jack Corry, and so, when it seemed that he was likely to be attracted, all the girls with one consent voted, "Better Norah than anyone else."
Then Jeannie Bellew came back to Benvora, changed as aforesaid, a fashionable young lady instead of a simple country girl, and yet with the power to act the latter character to perfection when it suited the whim of the moment. She was prettier than ever, and had acquired an ease and grace of manner which, together with an almost inexhaustible wardrobe, threw all the country girls into the shade.
Jeannie's father was very rich; sole owner of a vast manufacturing concern, which in his skilful hands was always growing in value.